While the internet is of very recent vintage, we find that communications that allow people and organizations to quickly communicate their thoughts and news from one entity to another have been around, since the implementation of the telegraph in the 19th century. At the time, when the telegraph was invented, this permitted those who desired to communicate the option to utilize a device that would allow near instantaneous communication from one part of the country to the next. This meant that news or other items of interest could be disseminated pretty much in real-time, along with providing areas of the country that were limited to timely information being just local in nature, to get a perspective beyond their provincial town and to hear that which was of national interest, instead. Indeed, part of what makes news so newsworthy is the timeliness of such, and when this is as close to real-time as possible, it makes that news not only to be more actionable but of much more interest.
We find then that when the South seceded from the Union, and even before, that the South made it its point, to censor news from Northern newspapers as well as mail communications from Northern enclaves that were reaching the South, so that they could control the narrative of what they wished to disseminate to the Southern population. This meant that the South censored, suspended, criminalized, and intimidated all those that stepped out of line, of what those that were the powers that be in the South, deemed to be damaging to their cause.
So, when it came to the telegraph, it was imperative for the South to take control of the information being transmitted because unlike a publication or a letter, which must first be printed or written and then still needed to be delivered to its destination, the telegraph, which could be equated to a sort of Victorian internet, permitted news to be sent nearly instantaneously, and therein lies the rub.
What the South did back then, is similar to what certain governmental agencies are attempting or desiring to do in the present age, which is to control what is disseminated to the general public and therefore to suppress any and all information that does not follow the orthodoxies of those that are in power. While there may be legitimate reasons why certain information, needs to be suppressed, such as in times of war, the bottom line is that once it has been decided that the government should have an agency, so labeled as the “Ministry of Truth,” and that all such being posted on social media and the like, must first be approved by that Ministry or their minions, then freedom of the press, and freedom of speech, has been vacated, and therefore the people are not free.
Indeed, freedom can be messy, and not everything read or disseminated is constructive, true, or of merit, but to permit governmental agencies to determine or to suppress or to intimidate those that are gateways of that information being available to the general public, is anathema to any people, that would be free, or desire to come to their own thoughts, without undue interference.